Summary
TikTok users reported that searches for anti-Trump content, such as “Donald Trump rigged election,” returned “No results found” messages in the U.S., while the same searches worked abroad.
Users demonstrated via VPNs that the restrictions seem specific to U.S. accounts, sparking accusations of censorship and claims TikTok is becoming “Trump’s propaganda arm.”
Some anti-Trump hashtags also appear blocked, while pro-Trump terms remain visible.
TikTok has not commented on the issue, fueling further concerns about free speech and potential political influence over the platform.
If a full Apple modal dialog screen thanking Trump pre-emptively isn’t enough to convince you TikTok is bootlicking, I don’t know what to tell you.
Something that occurred to me this morning is that its a bit worse than just them sucking up to Trump with that to get unbanned; to my understanding, he’s just stated he wont enforce the ban law, so if he was to change his mind, he wouldnt need congress to pass another I dont think? He’d just need to start enforcing the existing one. That means that TikTok has a strong incentive to continue sucking up to him throughout his whole term, to stay on his good side. But it goes further, because it also creates an incentive for other corporate social medias that compete with TikTok to do the same (though admittedly, their owners seem to want to anyway), in the hopes that they can convince him to enforce the ban again and remove some of their competition.
Yep, he’s got all the big social networks under his control now, basically. Tie that to the cowardice of the mainstream media, and he’s got an opportunity to manufacture consent on pretty much anything he wants. And Democrats helped him do it because they didn’t want to be criticised over Gaza on tiktok.
he’s got all the big social networks under his control now, basically. Tie that to the cowardice of the mainstream media, and he’s got an opportunity to manufacture consent on pretty much anything
You just described 1930s Germany and the aggregation of Hitler’s power.
It can happen anywhere. And now it’s happening here.
Yep, totally agree.
Someone should sue the administration for not enforcing the law. I’m not a lawyer but that’s a thing, isn’t it?
TikTok is not bootlicking. They’re manipulating him.
That’s not how you spell “kowtowing”
TikTok is allegedly collecting data on Americans that Congress has collectively deemed a security threat. That being a main objective, giving Trump a few things in return (promoting him in the app dialog, censorship in his favor) is so that they can continue to do what they do.
Trump is easily manipulated by strongmen like Putin and Xi.
Manipulation, to me, implies either a lack of awareness or agency.
Trump knows exactly what’s going on. He has agency. This is not Xi manipulating Trump, this is Trump’s cognizant, free choice. He chose to ignore congress, ignore law and allow TikTok because it’s pro Trump, it’s that simple.
I’m sure the Chinese govt approves of all this and TikTok has an interest in staying alive, but no one is tricking Trump into this. He is doing this.
That’s a fair point. I guess I think of kowtowing like Tim Cook, who is really anything but MAGA, donating to the inauguration fund.
He is definitely for sale so your assertion would not surprise me in the least.
Why do you think that it is the other way around though?
He tries to project strength even though he has none.
Lol. I imagined clown nose honking sounds as I read your comment.
This is going to be an era where people will have to move around on social media. I hope some decent alternative can happen for people to dip out.
Maybe people can give up social media. I won’t hold my breath though. People are fuckin addicted.
Everyone has their vices. I replaced fb with reddit over a decade ago. Never bothered with the rest of sm because it was mostly acquaintances posting boring shit and I had group chats with friends.
Now I’ve replaced 99% of my reddit usage with lemmy / hackernews, and lost half my friends due to the fascist propaganda sphere (anti-vaxer/sjw/trans dumb shit). It’d be really hard to abandon them entirely because I avoid most MSM (due to the overt corporate propaganda / censorship) and curating an rss feed is a-lot more effort. Dropping everything would result in becoming completely ignorant of the world.
Will they actually move? I sincerely doubt it. Getting people to change their social media is impossible if they stake any amount of their identity on its use and, sadly, most users do. Frankly, I’d have a hard time leaving lemmy for that reason. Love this little garbage heap among the endless poison wastes of the modern internet.
RedNote is touted as an alternative.
Aren’t we on one?
Except they won’t.
Don’t you think it would’ve happened to Twitter already? And it’s certainly not happening to something “essential” like Facebook, where it’s (for instance) the only place your grandparents are on, or the only place that most people list local used stuff on.
I don’t know about TikTok I guess, but it seems integral to the lives of younger people.
texting and Craigslist exist. these are just excuses they use to stay comfy and not stir the pot with their relatives or friends
Some of the people like the propaganda.
Just like a lot of Americans apparently have a fetish for terrible governance. That’s how I view Trump fans now to amuse myself. They’re edging themselves in the corner like: “oh yeah, Daddy, break that norm!”.
It would have been better for it to just have been banned and be done with it. Move on. Now, we will have the same issue we have with Twitter. People refuse to move on despite how terrible the platform is because they are addicted to it.
If it had been banned, it would have, likely, opened the door for a new social media landscape to take shape. Sure, banning isn’t good, but turning into what it’s becoming is, arguably, worse.
What’s more, now we know it would have been “banned” only because it wasn’t pro Trump.
Twitter is not as addicting as TikTok is. Using Twitter doesn’t form psychological dependence to nearly the scale that TikTok does. This is like comparing a ban against soda versus a ban against cigarettes. If soda is banned then a large number of previous soda-drinkers will just quit drinking soda. If cigarettes are banned, it’s not as likely that cigarette-smokers will suddenly decide to quit as a result. Granted, nicotine is known to be one of the most chemically addicting substances to mankind, but I think the comparison is still appropriate.
My tinfoil hat is definitely in between this and Facebook/instagram doing the exact same thing at the exact same time.
Everywhere except Bluesky seems to be.
Gosh, imagine that.
I don’t have TikTok. Anyone here have it and can confirm this themselves?
It’s specifically the rigged election conspiracy. I have TikTok and have seen several anti Trump videos just today.
Can anyone trust tiktok to not share your information with the Trump administration now?
Mark my words.
TikTok will become another right wing cesspool. Just like Facebook. Just like X/Twitter.
Time to swap to another app. It’s not that hard. It really isn’t. We’re pretty much all on Lemmy because we got tired of Reddit. Just. Swap. Apps.
Why only block them in the US, allowing people outside the US or on VPNs to confirm search results exist for those terms? Why not just block them everywhere?
Because it’s actually just for the rigged election conspiracy and preventing misinformation. Anti Trump videos are up and searchable.
At first I was surprised that the LA Times had the balls to publish something like this. Then I reread the url.
This is ridiculous. I provided a screenshot disproving this 2 days ago. It’s literally just trying to stop the spread of the conspiracy theory saying Trump rigged the election. I also just searched Fuck Trump and Trump Racist and got anti Trump results for both of those.
This article is what misinformation looks like.
The real question is why did the same search show blocked results in the US, but unblocked results when on a VPN outside the US?
I installed TikTok specifically to look at this. I got “no results” in the US, but DID get search results when on a VPN to the UK.
The really interesting bit is that now, that it’s all gone public, I get “no results” both ways. Cleared cache and data between searches even.
Because there’s a conspiracy theory that Trump rigged the 2024 elections because Star Link. Which is nonsensical to anyone with a knowledge of networking.
The article also goes on to make broader claims though which my screenshot disproves are even happening.
Oh, I’m not even going to touch the conspiracy nonsense, I’m more interested in the search engine disparity and why it’s suddenly “fixed” after it went public.
IIRC there were similar issues with Google a few years ago, I’m fuzzy on the details. Search disparity between countries that was somehow “solved” after it was exposed. Or maybe it was search suggestions? Something like that.
I mean it was “fixed” because they got embarrassed.
Caught! :) I don’t know that it’s possible to embarrass them.
Because there’s a conspiracy theory that Trump rigged the 2024 elections because Star Link. Which is nonsensical to anyone with a knowledge of networking.
Maybe it was. Isn’t he the one to issue EO against Government mandated censorship. So why censor any conspiracy theories now?
Because they decided to actually try responsibility?
Hahahahahahahahaha
I’ve never heard this and wouldn’t have believed it even if I did.
Like I said it’s nonsensical. Supposedly a special starlink satellite was used. Which makes as much sense as saying a special router was used.
Yeah, we all know it was manipulating the tabulators, not Starlink /s.
Point is, the censorship shouldn’t be exclusive by region. It’s not TikToks job to censor. It’s their job to spoonfeed content.
They absolutely should be helping to stop the spread of misinformation. We rag on Social Media for amplifying misinformation all the time and now suddenly it’s a bad thing to stop it?
You have to look at where the motivation is. Trump just “unbanned” tiktok in the US. That means that if ByteDance wants to keep doing business in the US, and continue raking in all those profits from the US market, they are beholden to Trump. Trump effectively controls TikTok in the US via extortion.
TikTok can’t be trusted in the US because it’s very existence here relies on appeasing Trump. So no, TikTok doing any fact checking is terrible because it is now a propaganda arm of the US government.
That’s quite a leap. And in reality all social media is on the block with that law. It’s an executive declaration. No court, no hearing, no due process. Just a declaration and you have to sell or shut down. So is the entire Internet now a propaganda arm of the US government?
The law that banned tiktok was about national security concerns of foreign companies. It does not apply to US-based social media companies.
Trump used an executive order to delay the law by 90 days. This is coercive in nature. It makes Trump look like the good guy to millions of tiktok users in the US for “saving” tiktok. It also lets Trump extort ByteDance via manipulation of TikTok (pushing US propaganda) in exchange for staying in the US market.
Personally I’ve always been anti-censorship.
I think the “community notes” under posts are sufficient imo.
TikTok could do the same, but censoring is a lose-lose
Which is hilarious because that’s the exact system we’re watching fail so horribly on other platforms.
